Category Archives: family stories

He imagines well the cradle and a new mother bending
over the small infant that she would be tending.
The baby’s arms reached up, his young wife’s arms extending
out to lift it up, so tender in their fending.
The eager father wending
home from his day of vending,
his yearned-for entrance pending,
each mile closer mending
their separation’s rending,
more satisfaction lending
toward their happy ending.

We find the key to the lake cabinthere where it always was above the eaves trough,enter that family space deserted for so many yearsand claim our old rooms.Bring in firewood piled on the porch thirty years agoand draw together at the trestle tableover dinners gatheredfrom the ice chests in the trunks of cars.

Dependent for so many yearson cell phones, e-mail and Facebook,we grow listless over the loss of cell tower and wifi,fall back on family videos from the far past,and having exhausted that sparse shelf,resort to family albums, dusty with accumulated years.

Over those cryptic signals from the past,we begin to remember more,and recall scraps of ourselvesthat give a meaning to the name of scrapbook.With no single screens possible,we draw together over simple common images.

Dad in the neighbor lady’s hat,sis in diapers and my mother’s heels,my tea towel sarong and doily hat,Mother, young enough to be our granddaughter,in a stylish hat tipped down over one eye,

Middle sister standing triumphant at the topof the slide she later fell from the top of—a past truth I might have never knownif not sealed up, like this,away from the wider worldand those parts of ourselvesthat keep flying off to it.

I take her hand, grateful for her survival.Just the two of us, now,everyone else sealed up in this peeling album.We put them to sleep again as we close its cover.In the morning, restore the key,nestle the “For Sale” sign more securelyinto its mooring place and divide to our separate worlds,the box of videos under my arm,the family scrapbooks under hers.

Click on first photo to increase the size of all and to read captions.

Patti and I with our Christmas dolls, 1951

These little birds covered the branches of our tree each year.

My first dancing partner. Yes, yet another Xmas doll.

A teenage Xmas in the new house. Note the giant shell hairdryer.

Dressed up for Xmas by my older sister.

Our first Xmas tree in full color.

Home for Xmas from college, complete with bubble hairdo.

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My mother was the hero of Christmas. Decorated waste paper baskets from the church bazaar, that “Skunk” game I’d been begging for, played once and never again, that one last doll when I was eleven, purchased more for her own nostalgia than my need. The tree went up as the orange and brown of Thanksgiving was disposed of, and the jubilation of Christmas stretched on until New Years, when the tree came down.

For my dad, however, the end of Christmas was never quick enough. The tree lights hurt his eyes, he said, but I always wondered if there was more to it than that: some sparsity of the Christmases of his past that had broken its spirit in the heart of a young boy raised on a South Dakota prairie that furnished few rewards, let alone extravagent Christmases, but still expecting more, perhaps, than an orange in the toe of his sock. A pony, maybe, or a stick of hard candy, a jaunty new blue winter stocking cap or simply a mother more given to Christmas than his own busy midwife of a mother, always off to somewhere else.

In our mad months of enthusiasm over tinsel, ornaments resurrected from the attic and the mystery of wrapped boxes, we overlooked the remnants of that little boy’s pain, but some part of each of us, detecting it by some subconscious radar, never gave up trying to heal those hurts of former Christmases with tiny Black Hills Gold tie tacks, new wallets and papier-mâché sculptures meant to prod him from his apathy. It never quite worked, except for that sculpture, ugly in its craziness, laughed and pondered over, then left to age and weather on their unroofed patio until its demise, giving one small hope of reviving a small boy’s wonder over Christmas and the unexpected. His forbearance over the years made him, perhaps, another subtler hero of Christmas, just in his putting up with it.

The prompt words for today are orange, game, hero, jubilation and quick. Here are the links:

My father on vacation was robotic in his thrust.His modus operandi was to get there or to bust—another hundred miles or so before we stopped to sup,and we rarely got a room before the moon was up!
When he hit the highway, he became another man.No mere roadside attraction could deflect his driving plan.In those days of two-lane traffic and a speed limit of fifty,he thought five hundred miles a day sounded rather nifty.
Fathers prone to threaten, who hit and rage and cussare, I fear, too often too ubiquitous.But this was not my father. Rage was not his style.He simply had addictions to mile after mile!

My dad was generous and fun. He told a story well,but to take a trip with him was nothing short of Hell. His proclivity to “get there,” I fear was never curable,and so family vacations were just barely endurable!

My sisters and I with my dad. He didn’t usually look this grim!

The prompt words today are highway, durable, robot and ubiquitous. Here are the links:

If I had met my parents when we all were sixty-seven,(before she went on oxygen, before he went to heaven,)would we have liked each other and found something to say?As strangers, would we walk on by or pass the time of day?

My father liked to be the one spinning out the tale.Beside his abundant stories, I think most of mine would pale.He wasn’t a joke-teller or a purveyor of fictions.It was true stories of his life that fueled his depictions.

And when his friends had heard them all, he’d tell them all again.Though they stretched with every telling, still his tales never grew thin.If fifteen wolves pursued him—a number that is plenty,the next time that he told the tale, I’ll wager there’d be twenty!

When I returned from Africa with stories of my own,I found that they weren’t good enough, for all of them had grownwith all my dad’s retellings, so the rhino I had snappeda photo of, now chased me. (In reality, it napped.)

I think perhaps my mother would like my poems the best.She’d like the rhyme and meter, the humor and the jest.For I learned all of it from her when I was very small,as she was doing rhyming before I learned to crawl.

I grew up with her diaries—all of them in rhyme.She had them in a notebook and we read them all the time.The tales of her friend Gussie, who wasn’t allowed beaus;so they said they went to Bible study, though it was a pose.

Gussie’s mother baked two pies, (for coffee hour, they said.)Her father said he’d pick them up. They said they’d walk instead.They took one of her mother’s pies to those within the church,then took the other with them as they left them in the lurch!

Their beaus were waiting for them in a car with motor running.Instead of Bible reading, they preferred to do some funning.To abscond with both the pies was something that they had debated,but in the end they left one pie–an action that they hated.

Two sisters present were their foes. They were so prim and proper.To steal one pie was lie enough—but two would be a whopper!Mom’s entry in her journal is one I can still tell.(Don’t know why it’s the only one that I remember well.)

Line for line, here’s what she said in metered verse and rhyme,though it’s been sixty years since I heard it for the first time:“We left that crowd of greedy Dirks to feast upon our pies.We were so mad, like Gussie’s Dad—had pitchforks in our eyes!”

My mother burned this journal when I was just a kid.I wish she hadn’t done so, but alas, it’s true, she did.Perhaps she didn’t want to see us following her ways.Instead of what she did, better to follow what she says.

But I am sure if she still lived we’d have a little fun,sitting down together when every day was doneand writing all our exploits down, relaying all our slips—saving for posterity the words that pass our lips.

And in the meantime, Dad would tell as long as he was able,all those stories that he’s told at table after table.In coffee shops and golf courses, at parties or a dance,he would go on telling them, whenever there’s a chance.

And if we all were strangers, and none of us were kids,we could relate our stories without putting on the skids.Each would outdo the other as we passed around the bend,with story after story till we all came to The End!!!

Each night, as I negotiate the squeaky stairs from her attic guest room down to the bathroom one more time,I hear the voices.

I imagine them as her companions, drowning out night sounds, freeing her mind from its hard task of remembering.

Tonight, she sits on a lawn chair on the grass. I sit on the front steps,listening to a friend on the steps next to me, strumming, strumming,as my sister and I sing along in high school harmony.

The little girls across the street are the first to come, tiny lawn chairs in arms, to plop themselves in front of usfor the concert.

As they settle, my sister says, “Now, back to the music.”

Moments later, their mother follows, bringing initial happy news of their upcoming trip to a lake where last yeara teenage girl had been abducted, a segue to more disturbing newsof yesterday’s daylight intruder flushed from a house a block away.

I’d noticed the police car circling, puzzled by his vigilance as we walked the neighborhood today. I’d smiled at the man on the bike who didn’t look a part of this neighborhood, wondering how he’d fare,

but now I feel the threat of him.

“House of the Rising Sun,” stops dog-walkers in their tracks as the litle ones sit on the sidewalk stringing beads I brought,capturing this night to hang around their necks:gray plastic elephants, pink stars, orange hearts, green dolphins strung midleap on sparkly purple cord.

This night strings us all together: beads, words, music, the night sounds
of insects and frogs, happy stories interspersed with fearful ones,traffic from the busy street one block away. Hungry mosquitoes, gathering suddenly, are what break us apart.

As we climb the stairs, her door next to the only bathroom in the house closes.

For the first time in the week I’ve been here, I hear no radio on my nightlong explorations down the stairs.

At ten o’clock, 1:30 and 3, the hall outside her bedroom stays silent, this evening’s full companyflooding over into the night.

We have exhausted her mind, filled it, worn her out. She stlll feels our presence. Four a.m.

A creaking door, and once again, silence becomes a cup for her to fill. Something is neededto relieve worry—to leave no room for either remembering or the lack of it. I hear them then, insistent, down the stairs and in the hall.

The prompt today was “varnish” and whenever I hear that word, I think of a certain lady in my far past. Here is a story from an early blog that will tell you why.

First Friends

I am three years old, lying in my Mom’s room taking a nap. I can hear voices in the front room. The world comes slowly back to me as I rouse myself from the deep sleep I swore I didn’t need. I hear my mom’s voice and the voice of a stranger. I slide my legs over the side of the chenille-covered bed, balancing for a moment like a teeter totter before giving in to gravity and letting my feet slide through space to the floor below. I creak open the door, which had been left ajar. My mom’s voice gets louder. I smell coffee brewing and hear the chink of china coffee cups in the living room.

I hear a dull rubbing sound and move toward it—through the kitchen to the dinette, where a very small very skinny girl with brown braids is sitting at the table coloring in one of my coloring books. She is not staying in the lines very well, which is crucial—along with the fact that she is coloring the one last uncolored picture in the book which I’ve been saving for last because it is my favorite and BECAUSE I HAVE IT PLANNED SO THERE IS SOMEWHERE IN THAT PICTURE TO USE EVERY LAST COLOR IN MY BOX OF CRAYOLAS!

I sidle past her, unspeaking, aflame with indignation. Who could have—who would have—given her the authority to color in my book? I stand in the door of the living room. My mom is talking to a mousy gray-haired lady—tall, raw-boned, in a limp gray dress. My mom sees me, and tells me to come over and meet Mrs. Krauss. They are our new neighbors. They are going to live in Aunt Stella and Uncle Werner’s house two houses down. Did I meet their daughter Pressie in the kitchen? She’s just my age and Aunt Stella and Uncle Werner (who are not actually related to us, but just friends of my folks) are her real aunt and uncle.

The gray lady calls Pressie in to meet me. She is quiet and I am quiet. Then we go back to color at the table together. We drink orange juice and eat potato chips. We will be best friends for what seems like a lifetime but what is really only until we approach adolescence. I will have a love-hate relationship with her mother, who will continually set up competitions between Pressie and me to see who will win. She will try to coach Pressie first; but still, I will always win.

Pressie and I will play hollyhock dolls and dress-up. We play, sometimes, with Mary Boone; but her parents are too religious and don’t think we’re nice enough to play with her very much. I want to put on neighborhood plays and circuses, but none of the other kids want to perform. I want to play store and school, but Pressie eventually goes home to help her mother varnish the floors.

Pressie’s house is full of loud brothers and a sulky teenage sister. It is full of high school-aged cousins who tease us unmercifully and old ladies who come to play Scrabble with her mother. It is full of a missionary sister who comes back from South America and married brothers who come from Florida with babies that Pressie and I take charge of.

Pressie’s house is full of slivery floors that are always in the process of being varnished or de-varnished. There is one drawer in the kitchen full of everybody’s toothbrushes, combs, hairpins, hair cream, shampoo tubes, old pennies, crackerjack toys, rubber balls, lint, hairballs, rolled up handkerchiefs and an occasional spoon that falls in from the drain board above it. They have no bathroom—just the kitchen sink and a toilet and shower in the basement, across from the coal bin and the huge coal furnace. Their toilet has a curtain in front of it, but the shower is open to the world.

Sometimes when I am peeing, someone comes down to put coal in the furnace or to throw dirty clothes in the washtub next to the wringer washer. I pull the curtain tight with my arms and pray that they won’t pull it back and discover me, my panties down to the floor, pee dripping down my leg from my hurried spring from the toilet to secure the curtain. To this day, I have dreams about bathrooms that become public thoroughfares the minute I sit down. To this day, I get constipated every time I leave the security of my own locked bathroom.

Pressie babysits with the minister’s kids for money. I go along for free. She spanks them a lot and yells a lot. I think I can’t wait until I’m old enough to have kids so I can yell at them, but when Pressie is gone and the minister’s wife asks me to babysit, I don’t yell at them.

At Christmas I can’t wait to have Pressie come see my gifts: a Cinderella watch, a doll, a wastebasket painted like a little girl’s face, complete with yarn braids, books and toilet water from aunts, a toy plastic silverware set from my sister, stationery from my other aunt, playing cards, sewing cards, paint by numbers, a new dress. I run over through the snow to Pressie’s house to see her presents: a new pair of pajamas, a coloring book and new crayons, barrettes and a comb. In her family, they draw names. Quickly we run to my house, but she doesn’t pay much attention to my presents. She is funny sometimes, kind of crabby. The more excited I get, the more withdrawn she gets.

Later, I want to make snow angels in the yard and feed leftover cornmeal muffins to the chickadees, but Pressie wants to go home. Pressie always wants to go home. What she does there, I don’t know. She doesn’t like to read. None of us will have television for another five years. She doesn’t much like games or cards. I don’t know what Pressie does when she isn’t with me.

When she is with me, we take baths together and sing the theme music from “Back to the Bible Broadcast,” washing our sins away in the bathtub. We play ranch house in our basement. We pull the army cot against the wall and put old chairs on either side of it for end tables. We upend an old box in front of it for a coffee table. My grandma’s peeling ochre-painted rocking chair faces the army cot couch. We sneak into the hired man’s room and steal his Pall Mall cigarettes and sit talking and smoking. We rip the filters off first, which is what we think you’re supposed to do.

Pressie will always stay longer if we smoke. I blow out on the cigarette, but Pressie inhales. We smoke a whole pack over a few weeks’ time and then go searching for more. When the hired man starts hiding his cigarettes, we discover his hiding place and learn to take no more than four at a time so he doesn’t miss them. When he has a carton, we take a pack and hide it under the mattress on the army cot. My mother wonders where all the filters are coming from that she sweeps from the basement floor, but never guesses our secret.

Pressie spends more time with me than before, drops by almost every morning and always wants to go to the basement to play and smoke. Then the hired man finds another room and moves out and when Mrs. Church’s granddaughters come to visit, I will want to play with them but Pressie won’t. Then we will pair off—Pressie with Sue Anne, the girly one, me with Kate, the boyish one. We have a little war—mainly instigated by the sisters.

When the new farm agent moves in with two daughters—one a year younger than Pressie and me, the other a year younger than my sister Addie—I want to ask the girl our age to play with us, but Pressie won’t. I have a slumber party for everyone—all the girls we know. I invite the new girl, whose name is Molly, but no one talks to her much. She is shy and doesn’t push herself on us. No one else ever wants to include her. I go play with her anyway and spend the night at her house. Her mother is nervous, her dad cocky. Her older sister laughs nervously under her breath a lot, as does her mother.

Many years later, by the time we are in high school, everyone has accepted them. By then, all of those girls have parties where I’m not invited. They are always a little reserved when I come up to speak to them. Maybe they’re always reserved. How would I know how they are when I’m not around? Later, they all got to be pretty good friends. But in the beginning, I was everyone’s first friend.